Finance Fail! Phil Hanlon Spent The Entire “Call to Lead” Fund Trying to Reunite The Beatles for Green Key

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Earlier this week, Dartmouth students, faculty, and alumni alike rejoiced at some of the most exciting news to come from the College Advancement Office in recent memory: Over the past few years, Dartmouth had successfully raised over 1.5 billion dollars as part of a new capital campaign expected to add nearly 3 billion dollars to the College’s already sizable endowment. Titled “The Call to Lead,” this fundraising drive was expected to fundamentally reshape student life at Dartmouth while improving the College’s research output and teaching quality at Dartmouth.

In the end, though, it seems all of this fundraising effort was for naught, because yesterday, President Hanlon announced via campus-wide email that he had unilaterally decided to spend all $1.5 billion of donations trying to reunite Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr for one final Beatles concert at Green Key.

“As you all know,” wrote Hanlon in his digital correspondence, “the Beatles’ music has been a part of my life ever since my early childhood, when my parents would jokingly sing “Here Comes the Sun” each and every time I, their only son, entered the room. This is the closest exposure to humor that I, Phil Hanlon, have ever experienced in my entire life, so naturally, the Beatles are near and dear to my heart. It is for this reason that over the past six months, as millions upon millions of dollars of donations have rolled into Dartmouth, I have been spending these funds on a full-blown effort to reunite the Fab Four for a final going-away concert at Green Key.”

Between January and February 2018, Hanlon began his musical mission by spending approximately $350 million writing calligraphic letters to George Harrison, using stationery made from the wood of endangered Brazilian Rosewood tree and ink made from the blood of a blue whale in an attempt to lure the famously reserved guitar virtuoso back into the group that made him legendary. A month later, in March, Hanlon spent $500 million dollars booking private round-trip flights to London each and every day so that each morning, Paul McCartney could wake up, look out his bedroom window, and see Phil Hanlon staring longingly up at him from the ground below. Perhaps most confusingly, Hanlon announced in his email that he had spent the remaining $650 million “buying out every seat at every leg of John Lennon and George Harrison’s upcoming duo concert tour,” a genuinely confounding statement from the College’s President considering that both of these former Beatles are dead and have been for several decades.

“Look, this obviously wasn’t what we expected President Hanlon would choose to do with the money,” said an anonymous Dartmouth endowment manager in an email to Jacko staff. “None of us in the Advancement Office are thrilled about it. But hey, at least he didn’t spend all that money on something really stupid like renovating the Choates dorms or repaying the Rennie Farm families.”

– SB ’20

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